Washington Square
Park and square in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. A setting in “Humans of New York”: Loft apartment on Washington Square where the narrator spends his first night with Charlie.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Humans of New York | Humans of New York | setting | Loft apartment on Washington Square where the narrator spends his first night with Charlie. |
| Gamification: The Science and Software to Make You More Productive | Alex Walz | setting | Dennis Crowley’s 2004 NYU thesis project Pac-Manhattan turned the streets around Washington Square Park into a live Pac-Man board, with… |
| The Anxious Generation | Jonathan Haidt | setting | A student’s phone-free awe walk among the cherry blossoms, which she says eased her anxiety. |
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Humans of New York — Humans of New York (2016)
Source: Original · Readwise highlight
Then afterward we went to his mom’s loft apartment on Washington Square.
- Role: setting
- In the article: After the gay bar, Charlie takes the narrator to his mother’s loft on Washington Square while she is in Rome. The narrator describes the first night together and the next morning when Charlie tells him to take off the towel, his first lesson in shedding shame.
- Why it matters: The loft is the sheltered, door-closed space where the narrator first feels safe; the text gives no detail of the square itself, so its role is as an address.
Gamification: The Science and Software to Make You More Productive — Alex Walz (2016)
Source: Original · Readwise highlight
Pac-Manhattan was a real-world game of Pac-Man. One player (“Pac-Man”) and four “ghosts” would run around Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, paired with a teammate in a remote control room.
- Role: setting
- In the article: Dennis Crowley’s 2004 NYU thesis project Pac-Manhattan turned the streets around Washington Square Park into a live Pac-Man board, with runners calling in at intersections to a remote control room. The article presents it as the origin of Foursquare and of the gamification boom.
- Why it matters: The real-world setting of the game experiment the article uses to explain gamification’s history; modest but concrete.
The Anxious Generation — Jonathan Haidt (2024)
Source: The Anxious Generation · Original · Readwise highlight
One student, Yi-Mei, began her awe walk in Washington Square Park, which is the green heart of the NYU campus.
- Role: setting
- In the book: Haidt’s NYU students take phone-free “awe walks” as homework. One, Yi-Mei, starts in Washington Square Park among the cherry trees in bloom and goes on to Central Park; she writes that her anxiety eased and she wanted to connect with strangers.
- Why it matters: It illustrates the book’s prescription of time outdoors, away from screens.